


Don't Press The Pawn's Buttons

by Opalgirl



Series: Mass Effect Stuff Collection [1]
Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Gen, Renegon (Mass Effect), Shepard is a little suicidal here
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-25
Updated: 2016-10-25
Packaged: 2018-08-24 15:56:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 496
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8378314
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Opalgirl/pseuds/Opalgirl
Summary: After coming back from the 'derelict' Collector vessel, Ada Shepard (Colonist/Ruthless, Renegon) has some words for the Illusive Man about his newest investment.





	

Shepard is swearing at him in what his translator says is an _old_ dialect of French from North America even before she’s within view of the QEC.

She tosses her helmet onto the deck, the ceramic plates cracking on contact, as her image flickers into view. Every line of her body screams  _fury_ , from the hard set of her jaw down to the tremor in her hands. This is… interesting, and nothing Chambers had noted. She’d been curiously flat, the other times he’d spoken to her.

“Commander,” he says, reaching for his glass once she’s begun to repeat herself. “I never knew you were religious.”

Her reply is a wordless snarl, her face twisting. “ _Never_ ,” she says, “ _again_. The next time you trick me will be the _last_.”

He shrugs. “It was a means to an end, Commander. We’re alike in that–”

“ _We are nothing alike_ ,” she says, not for the first time. “ _Nothing_.”

This is an old argument, one that he’s truly tired of having with her. “Your service record would indicate otherwise, Shepard.” He reaches for the cigarette burning in the ashtray, waiting to see what her response will be.

“ _Fuck. You.”_ She takes a step back, as if distancing herself from the projection of him will help, and pants for several seconds. “All right, fine, you–let me put it in terms you can understand. I’m a really expensive fucking _pawn_. So how about you _tell me what I’m fucking well walking into so you don’t waste your money._ Because here’s where you’re wrong: _I don’t want to be here_. Throw me into a situation like that again, your expensive little pawn might not come back.”

“You would rather be–?”

“Dead. _Yes_. So the next time you trick me or send us into something blind, I’m not coming back to do _your_ errands, Illusive Man.”

He considers his glass and taps the ash off the end of his cigarette. Hm. The Alliance’s profiles on her had _never_ mentioned self-destructive tendencies and neither had the profiles compiled when she was a Spectre candidate. Well-hidden, then. Or only recently arisen.

“Send me in _blind_  or lie to me or put my people in danger with garbage intel  _ever again_ and you can kiss your investment goodbye. Am I clear?”

“Of course, Commander. That was a… rather illuminating speech.”

She rolls her eyes. “And if you send Chambers or the–Lawson after me over this, there’ll be another Cerberus surveillance device that’ll show up in Afterlife’s men’s room. Joker,” she says, and kicks at her discarded helmet, glancing up at the ceiling, “we’ve just lost this channel to some interference.”

The last thing from the _Normandy_ he hears is the pilot’s  _“yes, ma’am.”_

Miranda will be pleased to know that the Commander’s emotions apparently _do_ function as expected, and that there wasn’t a flaw in the reconstruction. Intriguing that Shepard is willing to essentially commit suicide in order to prove her point. Not many humans would.


End file.
